George Cooper Stevens

Stevens, George Cooper, 1904–75, American film director, b. Oakland, Calif. A distinguished 20th-century filmmaker, he is known for his skillful camera work and careful craftsmanship. After 1925 he was a cameraman in Hollywood, in 1930 he began to direct, and in 1933 he directed his first feature-length film. During more than four decades in the movie-making business, he directed such now-classic films as Alice Adams (1935), Gunga Din (1939), Woman of the Year (1942), I Remember Mama (1948), Shane (1952), The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). Stevens won Acadamy Awards as best director for A Place in the Sun (1951), an adaptation of Dreiser's An American Tragedy, and for the Texas epic Giant (1956).